In funding organised by the British Government Rolls Royce and EDF are among the winners of a total of 54 million pounds ($65 million). The British government announced the winners this Friday, whereas the funding was organised to help research technology to remove greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere.
Britain said that the greenhouse gas removal technology will be essential to help it meet its climate target of net zero emissions by 2050, however, currently, just a handful of small projects are in operation. Britain aims to remove 25 million tonnes of CO2 a year from the atmosphere by 2030.
EDF won 3 million pounds to fund a Direct Air Capture (DAC) plant, which works by using chemical reactions to capture carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air as it passes through the plant, which then is either stored permanently or can be reused for industrial purposes. Additionally, the plant can be powered by using excess heat from its proposed Sizewell C nuclear plant in Suffolk, England.
According to EDF, the funding will enable it to build a demonstration unit with engineers from the University of Nottingham, Strata Technology, Atkins, Doosan Babcock and Sizewell C capable of extracting 100 tonnes of CO2 from the air each year.
“If the demonstrator project being developed by the consortium is successful, a scaled-up DAC unit powered by heat from Sizewell C could one day capture 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 each year,” EDF said in a statement.
On the other hand, Rolls-Royce has also secured 3 million pounds for a DAC demonstration unit, which would also capture 100 tonnes of CO2 a year, whereas, with a full-scale version the removal might even reach 1 million tonnes a year.
A total of 15 groups have won funding, including the University of Exeter, which is developing a system to remove CO2 from seawater, and Scottish firm SAC Commercial, which is developing technology to capture methane produced by cattle.